New Wearable Analyzes Health Via Sweat

Trending News: Your Smelliest Bodily Fluid Can Determine How Healthy You Are

Why Is This Important?

Because in the future we may never have to actually visit a doctor's office.

Long Story Short

Researchers at UC Berkeley have developed wearable technology that reads key health indicators from an unlikely source — sweat. The sensor can get an accurate reading from 1/10 of a drop of sweat, and the researcher hope to expand its capabilities.

Long Story

Most of us sweat buckets when we exercise, and it seems like kind of a waste (other than, you know, regulating your body temperature). But sweat can be an incredibly valuable diagnostic tool (it's enough to get you questionably convicted of murder, after all), it's just that most tests require an awful lot of it to be useful. That may change in the near future, though, because UC Berkeley researchers have developed wearable sensors that can accurately monitor several key health indicators.

Professor Ali Javey and his team developed the device, which is bluetooth enabled (for sending data to a smartphone) and contains four sensors to analyze four different chemicals in sweat: Potassium, sodium, glucose and lactate. Potassium and sodium are associated with the onset of muscle cramps, and lactate levels correlate with blood flow in different areas of the body. Sweat glucose correlates with blood glucose, meaning the sensor can potentially tell users how much energy they're expending, and where it's coming from.

Right now, the device (which fits easily within an exercise sweatband for comfort) can accurately analyze those four biomarkers from as little as 1/10 of a drop of sweat. The researchers, however, would like to expand its capabilities to analyze more compounds with even less fluid.

"The goal, ultimately is to have a pathology lab right on the body," Javey told the L.A. Times. "The long term goal is to see if we can work with minimum amount of body liquid, so you won't need to exercise for the monitor to work."

The monitors aren't yet ready for commercial distribution, but the remaining challenges seem reasonable, according to experts. In the future, there may come a day when you can replace the visit to your doctor for your annual checkup with a brisk jog around the block. Get some cool sweat-activated clothes, and you'll smell better, too.

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